The Eternal Necklace

By: Elizabeth Price

Many years ago,
an elderly lady went back to an area she and her family had once owned.
On this final visit, she called on a young family whose parents she had
been friendly with. She left the mother a package of old jewelry pieces,
saying, "These are for your little girl to play with."

The little girl
was too young then to even remember the elderly lady and eventually, all
the bits and pieces were used on dolls and toys and were finally lost.

Except one piece.

It was a
necklace, completely whole and unbroken. Somehow, the little girl kept
it and when she herself was old, she took it out of her box of treasures
and began to wear it. She said it held memories of three people, the
elderly lady she did not remember, her own mother and now, her own life.
Whenever she puts it on, she said, it is as though she binds the three
together in a loving embrace.

Even more
significantly, she said it reminds her of the love her Lord pours out to
her because God
Himself
has a necklace.He pours
out his love through it to everybody in the whole world,
and He
tells us about it in the first book of the Bible. Whenever He
brings His
necklace out to share it with us, He
binds it around us to hold us and our world to Himself.

It will not wear out, or get lost, or even get damaged through
careless use, nor can we discard it because it is no longer in fashion.
It belongs entirely to God.

It is the
rainbow.

He put it up in the sky after Noah came out of the ark,
and He promised Noah
that the rainbow was a sign to Him
and all who followed, that He,
God, would never again cover the world with a flood. But it has another
deep significance.

After his
conversation with Noah, God looked at the rainbow and God said, "I
will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between
God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth."(Genesis 9:16)His
everlasting covenant is in Genesis, chapter 1, where He
created us in his own image to have 'dominion
over'
a perfect world and now the rainbow is His
symbol that His
word is still true.

God, who has
deepest compassion on all that He
created, looks at the rainbow spread across a world that is today full
of violence and corruption, and it reminds Himself
of His
own everlasting covenant.So, in
response to the disaster of sin, and planted in the first book of the
Bible, He
places His
rainbow necklace around us to bind us to Himself
and to remind Himself
in a way that is visible to us, of His
eternal covenant.Then in
the last book of the Bible, "...a
throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne...and
there was a rainbow round about the throne."(Revelation
4:2-4)

So next time
you see a rainbow, remember it is the most expensive piece of jewelry
ever designed.It
was handcrafted personally by our God,
and it is the symbol of the eternal covenant.